Hope Fellowship Church invests in Obsidian lighting controllers

As part of an upgrade of its lighting control system, Hope Fellowship Church in Frisco, Texas, has purchased Obsidian NX4 and NX Wing lighting controllers and is now running the ONYX platform across the ministry’s four campuses. The HOW acquired the equipment from Full Compass.

Mark Ellis, production development director, manages volunteers and interns across the church’s four campuses. Three years ago, the HOW opened a 1,700-seat main sanctuary at the Frisco East campus, which serves as a broadcast campus to the other three locations. A Frisco West campus and a campus in the nearby town of McKinney, both remodelled supermarkets, hold about 1,400 parishioners each, while a mobile campus in the town of Prosper currently holds services in a high school. The church acquired an NX4 lighting console for its Frisco East building along with NX Wings for the Frisco West and McKinney satellite sites. The Prosper campus uses ONYX software on a PC.

Ellis is a past user of M-PC lighting control software. “When I first came to the church, they were using a Martin M1 console with M-PC software,” he said. “When it was time to upgrade to something new, I was looking for something user-friendly that all my volunteers knew. We looked at other consoles but they were more than what we wanted to pay and overly complicated. The Obsidian gear was a great value plus it let me keep familiarity with all our gear, also for our volunteers.

“It was really a very seamless transition,” continued Ellis. “I was able to just drop a show file in and go. I've been on other consoles and they can be a bit intimidating but, with ONYX, we show it to a volunteer and they can run a service after only a couple of run-throughs. It's been rock solid and the ease of use is great. At Frisco West and McKinney, we use a lot of MIDI control and again it was easy to set up and use.”

Another aspect of the console that Ellis finds valuable is the built-in pixel composer Dylos, which allows users to eliminate an external media server with presets. “Dylos was one of the biggest selling points for why we went with the NX4 console and Wings. Getting rid of that media server computer connected to the console has been great. I’m still learning it but right now I have a layer pixel-mapping some LED strips in solid colours or slow-moving patterns. For our student services, we go a little more flashy. It’s real bang for the buck and has been a big plus.”